dhaupert wrote:Can you tell me what files are shown in the main folder then? Should be a bunch of PDB files. Let me know the names of the files. You may prefer to email this to me directly. Ideally a screenshot of the open database screen would help as well, especially since we show the path of each file listed and it should be pretty obvious where the duplicate is residing!

Sorry to mix threads... But I'm a little confused. My problem with the same database appearing twice in the Open dialog is on the handheld. When I select the two database with the same name (in the Open dialog on the handheld) and then select "Database Info" on each of them, I get back exactly the same information (While I'm at it, the "Number of Records" field in the "Database Info" screen seems to only show the number of records in the default view rather than the number of total records in the database which can be very confusing).

On the desktop, I only see the database in question once in the Open Dialog. I also only see the file once in the HandBase area on the Desktop.

dhaupert wrote:Can you tell me what files are shown in the main folder then? Should be a bunch of PDB files. Let me know the names of the files. You may prefer to email this to me directly. Ideally a screenshot of the open database screen would help as well, especially since we show the path of each file listed and it should be pretty obvious where the duplicate is residing!

Sorry to mix threads... But I'm a little confused. My problem with the same database appearing twice in the Open dialog is on the handheld. When I select the two database with the same name (in the Open dialog on the handheld) and then select "Database Info" on each of them, I get back exactly the same information (While I'm at it, the "Number of Records" field in the "Database Info" screen seems to only show the number of records in the default view rather than the number of total records in the database which can be very confusing).

On the desktop, I only see the database in question once in the Open Dialog. I also only see the file once in the HandBase area on the Desktop.

Yes Dave, I can produce this same bug. If you have two databases files that share the same name internally (typically this would happen if you use file explorer to make a copy of an existing database, like data.pdb copied to datacopy.pdb, and leave the copy in the handbase directory) then they both show up in the open dialog screen listed as the same name, one below the other. That's all fine, but the bug is that no matter which one you touch, it only opens the original one. You can't get to the second one to open it or to give it another internal name, although you can on the desktop. For some reason, WM handbase knows there are two databases with the same name, but only lets you pick the original one no matter which one you touch. To work around this you can go in to the Details/General tab and change the name of the first one. Then you can access the second one because it now has a unique name. I would be nice to fix this issue so 1) you don't have to rename the original database, and 2) so it matches the way it works on the desktop. On the desktop as well, even if you have the same internal name, you can see the filename, so you know which one you are choosing. On the WM version, you just see two identical names, and don't know which is which. Right now it doesn't matter because it only gives you one anyway. But it might be nice to add the filename information to the Tools/Info screen, so you could see which one you are dealing with. There is a way to get to the identiclally-named database, if you use Tools/Browse and navigate to the handbase folder, where you can see the filenames and pick the one you want. This would be a way to delete it too, from inside of handbase, which was part of the original question.

It seems to me this is a case of making things too complicated in the name of flexibility. While I can see why someone might want to have an internal data base "name" different from the actual file name, it seems to me that about 95% of users would never have a need for this to happen, and it simply introduces confusion - as it is, there's so many versions of the same database floating around in various places on our desktops because of the behaviour of HotSynch/ActiveSynch/HanDBase Conduit, backups, etc., I bet Dave and Brian have fielded dozens of questions over the years related to "where is which version of my database?"

Why not simply have them both be the same (without the .PDB suffix, obviously)? In this case, my feeling is KISS trumps flexibility.

If, nonetheless, the decision is made to keep two separate entities, the file name and the internal database "name", maybe giving the latter a different descriptive term, such as "Data Base Title", or something like that, would minimize the confusion.

Avi wrote:It seems to me this is a case of making things too complicated in the name of flexibility. While I can see why someone might want to have an internal data base "name" different from the actual file name, it seems to me that about 95% of users would never have a need for this to happen, and it simply introduces confusion - as it is, there's so many versions of the same database floating around in various places on our desktops because of the behaviour of HotSynch/ActiveSynch/HanDBase Conduit, backups, etc., I bet Dave and Brian have fielded dozens of questions over the years related to "where is which version of my database?"

Why not simply have them both be the same (without the .PDB suffix, obviously)? In this case, my feeling is KISS trumps flexibility.

If, nonetheless, the decision is made to keep two separate entities, the file name and the internal database "name", maybe giving the latter a different descriptive term, such as "Data Base Title", or something like that, would minimize the confusion.

And of course the bug has to be dealt with.....

-avi

I agree with you here on this. In fact, I believe the Windows Mobile platform is the only one we have the concept of a file. On Palm OS, there was no concept of a file, so it was a non issue there. Same thing with BlackBerry. But on iPhone, while still using a file system, we based our coding on our experiences with Windows Mobile, we obfuscated the whole notion of file names as much as possible. The database name is the only thing you can control, and we name the file appropriately. This was kind of an experiment to see which direction we should take this for the future. And in the case of the iPhone, it's proven to be successful, very little issues of this kind, and less confusing to the customer as well.

That said, the fact remains that there can still be two files installed in a folder with the same database name, hidden within different file names. The iPhone uses a sandboxed environment, meaning there is no access to the files used by HanDBase other than by the HanDBase program itself. So we could and do avoid this- when you use our interface to load files onto the device, the program looks at the database name and if it exists, it merges the data with the file already there, rather than just overwrite or make an additional copy of the database.

With Windows Mobile, that wouldn't work- the conduit and the concept of being able to browse the device from your PC and copy files as you see fit, means there is nothing to stop customers from putting duplicates on there, thus it has to be dealt with. We can certainly make the problem less prevalent by auto naming files saved on the device however, and that's something I'd expect in a future release.

In answer to the problem the others described, this could be considered a bug, but it's not one I'm planning on addressing quite honestly. We simply recommend that if you have two files that have the same database name, you rename one of them. To access them randomnly, try using file explorer and browsing to My Documents\HanDBase. In there you can click a file and it will launch directly in HanDBase. Then you can rename the database to be the appropriate different name.

I agree that it is not worth spending time to fix this "bug" especially when probably no one really wants to have two databases with the same name anyway. And for the times when it accidentally happens, this thread provides several ways to access and correct the databases from within and outside of handbase, so that's good enough for me. I'd much rather you spend your precious debugging time fixing the drop-down menu problem, or for us Vista users, the Activesync problem with UAC on.

Daniel Ellis wrote:I agree that it is not worth spending time to fix this "bug" especially when probably no one really wants to have two databases with the same name anyway. And for the times when it accidentally happens, this thread provides several ways to access and correct the databases from within and outside of handbase, so that's good enough for me. I'd much rather you spend your precious debugging time fixing the drop-down menu problem, or for us Vista users, the Activesync problem with UAC on.

Do not assume that everybody who has HandBase has access to this forum. The program should be made as user-friendly as possible and that includes fixing any known "bugs". HandBase is a very nice program but it can be difficult for people to use. I wish I wasn't posting so many questions to these forums. There are probably many more people out there that have trouble using the program and give up without resolving the problem.

It wasn't my intention to create duplicate database names and it was unclear to me how to resolve this until I asked the experts (Thanks for your comments.. It helped me resolve my problem). I've also had troubles in the past where I renamed a database (using the internal database name field) and the forms associated with it couldn't be found. Has this issue been fixed? Also, will the HandBase to MS Access sync issue be fixed in the pending release?